What Is Art? (Barnes & Noble Library of Essential Reading)

What Is Art? is the result of fifteen years of reflection about the nature and purpose of art. The book is noteworthy not only for its famous iconoclasm and compelling attacks on the aestheticist notion of "art for arts sake," but even more for its wit, its lucid and beautiful prose, and its sincere expression of the deepest social conscience.

Tolstoys challenging claims that all good art is relate...